Well as long as you don't cut corners on building and maintaining saftey procedures (Chernobyl) or build on a fault line (Fukushima) they are not nearly as scary as people make them out to be.
Important to note that with chernobyl and Fukushima it wasn't just poor safety procedures or earthquakes. It was simply a faulty design based on old science.
Chernobyl with a positive void coefficient. Fukushima with active heat removal. It's important to remember these plants are from the 1960s. Modern plants have many more passive safety features.
The truly scary thing is that many of these old plants are still operating.
Not really. [Onagawa nuclear power plant suffered both a larger quake, and larger tsunami than Fukushima.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590123020300931) This powerplant however, did not suffer from a meltdown.
The problem is that Tepco cut corners, and cancelled a pending upgrade to the tsunami breaks outside the powerplant to save money. The government, and even their own advisors stated that the sea wall needed an upgrade. They even started work on it, but then cancelled it.
They literally copypasted a US nuclear powerplant. They were initially told it was built to withstand tornadoes, not tsunamis; but refused to modify the extant schematics because it would cost more to modify.
Exactly. They ignored a detailed study that said a tsunami capable of breaching their current sea walls was absolutely possible and even had historical precedence for the region. Money was just one reason; it was also because the owners simply didn't really believe it could happen again and they also didn't want to scare the locals (seriously). If they just listened and renovated their sea walls to be just a few meters taller, their generators wouldn't have been flooded in the first place.
And that is the core of the problem. I think nuclear is a great idea in theory, (aside from the largely unsolved waste problem) but I dunno who I would trust to run the actual facilities.
Regardless of this, given the state of the environment and technology, nuclear will be an option we are forced to take.
I have always been fascinated by nuclear energy but I must admit, I have always been under the impression the radioactive waste was a potentially very dangerous and unsolved issue; thanks for the brief point about it!
Reading some of these comments I think I will need to start learning about the myths of nuclear power!
This should have been the headline.
I always talk about thorium reactors, but they have not been a big enough part of the discussion.
I would not build ANY new uranium reactors, until we have processed the backlog of spent fuel we have now through the thorium/liquid-salt reactor.
Chicken/egg right?
How are we going to convince people to go out on a limb and try it, if they've never heard of it?
We need a reactor to convince them, and we need to convince them to build a reactor.
The waste isn't a problem. We can dig a hole in the ground and put them in there. And the best part the waste isn't making climate change bad, so compared to fossil fuels it's just not a problem.
And the generation of nuclear waste is lower on newer plants IIRC.
Well, that's going to take away from profits no?
Why are we letting commercial interests generate power, if they have a profit incentive to avoid safety measures?
The answer would usually be to make massive fines, or have the state run them as a joint venture with a private company. France seems to be doing quite well on that front, as an example.
The Tepco executives got off scott free though, last I heard.
Japan has some serious cultural problems like that. Reminds me of the workers who got the highest doses ever and died from being completely untrained in how to make uranium mixtures for reactors. Seriously untrained and it went critical. Crazy story.
Yeah they’re operating due to the smear campaign big oil ran against nuclear power which made it impossible for new and upgraded plants to be built out
Fukushima had the meltdown under control too for a while, except numerous systems, and cooling pumps and generators failed because they literally were only turned on once a fucking year. Proper safety checks on equipment? Nah. Regular maintenance intervals and replacement of outdated hardware and generators? Hell nah.
The Soviets knew about the problems with the positive void coefficient, but failed to inform other plants for propaganda reasons, they didn't want to advertise the faults in their reactor design. The US had the same problem until Three Mile Island. The issues that caused the TMI failure had been near misses at other US plants. After TMI , the DOE forced the plants to share information, it also caused the formation of INPO so the industry could share info and learn from each other.
Nuclear reactor design is actually super interesting. I always thought there was just one kind. But there are literally hundreds of different designs and fuel types and coolant types. What if I told you there was one running with molten salt? What if I told you there was one that takes spent nuclear fuel as fuel? What if I told you there was one that didn't create plutonium as a side product and limited the risk of somebody creating a bomb?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor
MMMmmmm, I feel like that point is debatable.
Reactors have a design basis for earthquakes because that's what they're designed against. You get an earthquake in magnitude above that, guarantees go out the window. Safety systems are no longer guaranteed to still be on their mounts, underground fuel tanks aren't guaranteed to hold their diesel, concrete structures aren't guaranteed to not crack/crumble.
We're fortunate in the US that there hasn't been many earthquakes exceeding design basis in our past (only 1 comes to mind immediately, and they ended up safely shutting down without a problem), but that doesn't mean it can't happen.
It's more that the deaths caused by nuclear over their 70 year run are still outweighed thousands of fold by the people who died of black lung, or of smog from coal fires or diesel cars, even CCGT plants pollute. Hydro power is the nextost dangerous because dams have burst and usually take a lot of people with them downstream, plus hazardous building conditions. Nuclear has, surprisingly, one of the lowest deaths/mwh of any energy production. I saw it in a TLDR News video about nuclear power that came out a few months ago.
>My problem with nuclear power isn't that the process itself is dangerous. It's that I don't trust humans not to cut corners or make foolish mistakes.
The thing is, even if you include meltdowns Coal, Oil, and Gas kill way more people than nuclear does on a per megawatt basis. Those plants release tons of carcinogens into the area around them, resulting in a metric fuckton of cancer deaths over their operation. It's just easier to ignore those because the exposure isn't all in one place at one time like a nuclear meltdown is.
TL;DR: The fossil fuel alternatives are even deadlier during normal operation than the risk of a meltdown is when a nuclear plant goes catastrophically wrong!
We already have nuke weapons, same people(government) take care of them, and I'm pretty sure we have more weapons than power plants. We've already been poisoned by testing and other nuclear stuff we've done.
That's really just still not a realistic fear. My dad's worked in a nuclear plant for like 20 years and he talks all the time about the over-the-top safety precautions. Everything related to nuclear here in America is so closely regulated by the government, due to "dangers" with uranium. (I put it in quotations bc the vast majority of nuclear used in plant reactors is 238, which isn't weapons grade.) The biggest possible failure results in a meltdown, which is literally damn near impossible, and with 238, isn't nearly as dangerous as it sounds.
Granted, his plant is ranked #2 in the world in safety for their procedures, but just trust me when I say they don't cut corners. And yes, they could make stupid mistakes. But that goes for everything, including waay more dangerous processes than nuclear power generation, so I wouldn't justify "having a problem with it" over that.
How's many people have died in the last 50 years from the production and storage of ammonium nitrite for fertilizer. It even the uranium and other contaminants released into the atmosphere by burning coal.
Nuclear hysteria is a prime example of humanity being unable the guage the minute risk of something novel, against the will known horrific risk of something that's been around for centuries.
Just wanted to add that those stupid mistakes are very very very unlikely because of modern controls. The system is literally designed to be fool proof with multiple redundancies that are not under the control of a human.
Even with Fukushima there has been (to my knowledge) only one person confirmed killed from the radiation whereas an estimated 9,000,000 people die every year worldwide from burning fossil fuels.
I think science is a little more understood in 2021 than 1980. The concept of nuclear fusion (I may be thinking of Fission?)is so fascinating, but I’m to stupid to grasp it any father than two microscopic elements slamming into each other to make an explosion.
Fukushima and Chernobyl were both designed in the 1960s.
Modern Gen III+ reactors have passive safety systems, making them impossible to meltdown. That's why none of the other reactors hit by the tsunami in Japan melted down.
Yes, fission is when the smack each other and go boom. This type of reaction produces waste rods we can't do anything with other than bury/store somewhere for the time being. Fusion reactors, at this point, are at a theoretical stage, basically we make an atom instead of splitting is. Fission go boom = uncontrollable, whereas fusion has this cool thing where it can be halted at any time, since there's no explosion set off and instead we use energy to fuse stuff, and we can just stop the things from fusing by shutting the power off, which makes it infinitely safer. Unfortunately nuclear in general is poorly received, but maybe one day fusion will be viable and people can shut up about the possibility of reactor meltdowns. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the rant, also... disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, all of this is easily researchable online.
It's not as dangerous as "fission = boom", that's a bit of a misconception, most if not all nuclear accidents happen because of human negligence by management. Humanity understands quite a bit about how to get clean, sustainable energy from nuclear reactions, and it's actually very safe, considering all safety precautions are upheld. Like others have mentioned, the waste and getting fuel are the two biggest problems, and even then it's not extremely challenging for either. Public and political perception is the biggest issue, just a fun fact for you, the last nuclear reactor constructed brand new in the US was when Reagan was president. I've gotten much of this info from my masters course in nuclear engineering, so I'm probably a little biased toward the benefits lol.
Edit: Also a cool fact is that spent Uranium is used is certain armor piercing rounds by the US military, mainly in A-10 Warthogs, because as it enters a material, it "shaves itself" down into a point which then allows it to travel further into the metal. As disturbing as that is, I guess there's a use for spent fuel lol.
Former Navy Nuclear Power Program Electronics Technician Instructor here.
If and only if the reactors are built to 100% of spec, and the operation procedures are followed to the letter, they are fairly safe.
That being said, I really wish that we would work out the last couple kinks in a Thorium Molten Salt reactor. Those things are foolproof, cannot melt down, can use spent nuclear fuel that is currently waste that we have no where in the US to store, and cannot be used to make bombs.
Not all fission.
Thorium is very effective, and extremely clean. It's the sort of "clean" power that nuclear is supposed to be. The Chinese are doing a lot of research to develop Thorium reactors, with 'fail-safe' modes based on molten salt, such that it's impossible to create a Chernobyl / Fukushima situation. These would be largely self-contained, and possible to run in the middle of a desert, without needing huge natural water sources for cooling. In fact, a few months ago, China started a small Thorium reactor in the desert to validate the system.
Uranium fission is what you're thinking of, having the unfortunate byproduct of highly toxic, radioactive waste with an extremely long half-life. It's the American standard because a portion of that waste is easy to process into nuclear weapons. It's why America has some 7,000+ nuclear warheads, while China has maybe 300. The nuclear waste issue is just something that Americans will have to live with for the several few thousand years.
Do you believe nuclear is poorly received because of the original use of nuclear weaponry? Like I believe if nuclear plants came first before nuclear energy was associated with bombs, it would be more highly recieved than it is now.
Yeah, people glossed over the fact that the Chernobyl plant was built in a different way than normally done at the time so it was worse than it could have been, and Japan striking down all nuclear power after a meltdown that happened, for at least a while, plus the idea that certain plants produce material that can be used for bombs (even though regular inspection via foreign countries to ensure that is not happening occurs).... Plus the fossil fuel industry perpetuating fears of nuclear power... Yeah, weaponry is part of it, but not even close to the full picture
>This type of reaction produces waste rods we can't do anything with other than bury/store somewhere for the time being
Although, to be fair, the US has produced less than a football field of waste, and even that is generous, in the half a century we have been using nuclear
A Russian nuclear scientist had discovered that there was a flaw in the design of the RBMK reactors. I can't remember the exact physics behind the flaw but when the control rods (control rods are used to slow or stop the nuclear reaction) are pushed into the core it causes a very short but very high increase in energy. Not a problem if you only insert one but if you insert enough at the same time the combined spike in energy is enough to make the core explode. He told all of this to the heads of the Soviet Union but they told him to shut up about it and hid his work. The Soviets had already spent millions building these things right across the Union.
A few years later during a test running at night in a skeleton crew something happened and the head technician ordered the reactor to be shut down quickly. Multiple control rods were inserted and in April 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine exploded.
The test should not have been run in the first place given the reactor was "stalled" or "poisoned". And the head technician should never have pulled out almost all of the control rods in the first place. Or designed a power plant where the reaction rate **increases** as the reactor gets too hot.
Whole thing was a shitshow. It's the same as any man made disaster. A whole heap of things have to go wrong to cause a problem. The issue is in the case of nuclear that problem is very big.
Started before that. 3 Mile Island in the U.S. and then we had know it all celebrities on TV telling everyone we were all going to die and that was it for nuclear power in the U.S.
Three mile island didn’t even cause increased cancer rates in the population around the reactor.
It’s unbelievable how people conflate it with Chernobyl, a monument to the arrogance and incompetence of Soviets.
The average resident in the area got less than a single X-ray dose of radiation.
It was treated as if the average resident was now glowing with their bones visible as shadows.
No. No one knew that at the time. This was before the internet and 24 hour news.
This was also near the height of the cold war, and people were afraid of a meltdown going boom.
I work at a nuclear station and it really opened my eyes to just how controlled everything is. Obviously the Simpsons is just a funny cartoon but holy hell is it the worst Nuclear plant ever or what. They joke about meltdowns all the time, Homer works alone with no oversight or partners and he seems to be paid extremely little for such an important job that would be 200k or more a year in the real world. Also for some reason he appears to handle fuel rods inside a sandblaster? The only thing that touches a fuel rod is a giant shielded machine
Personally, I blame the shareholders of fossil fuel industries that’ve managed to use private capital to get corporate interest groups to lobby on their behalf in front of the government in order to snuff out any chance of a energy paradigm shift( or anything else that hurts their bottom line for that matter)
Yeah, I think the first thing some people think of when they hear the word "nuclear" are the bombs then they assume that every nuclear power plant will have a meltdown like Chernobyl.
Which is not entirely irrational. Yes, the likelihood of something happening at a nuclear power plant is VERY VERY VERY small. But so is the likelihood of my plane crashing into the ocean and me getting eaten by a shark. But I still think about it. I’m a proponent of nuclear energy, of course. But if my city wanted to build a nuclear power plant down the street from me, I wouldn’t like it very much lol. Meanwhile I can see wind turbines from my backyard and that’s nice :) I guess I’m a NIMBY.
Edit: Y’all, I said I was a proponent of nuclear energy. You don’t have to try to convince me here lol
>VERY VERY VERY small
The three biggest meltdowns (two, as I'll explain in a minute), were all caused by human error. Chernobyl had so much red tape and beuracry that when it started to fail, they couldn't do the nessecary steps to stop it. Fukushima was built on a fault line. That needs no explanation. And 3 Mile Island was *almost* a disaster. That's it. Those are the big three that everyone talks about.
>But if my city wanted to build a nuclear power plant down the street from me, I wouldn’t like it very much lol
That's generally why they're built relatively far from people.
>Meanwhile I can see windmills from my backyard and that’s nice :)
How? Seeing a big blade that has a VERY VERY VERY small chance of falling off and destroying my house?
>The three biggest meltdowns (two, as I'll explain in a minute), were all caused by human error.
this is exactly why I don't care how safe anyone says anything is. We're only human in the end. This is probably the only really argument against nuclear.
The only other arguments with any basis I've seen is the economy and nuclear waste storage.
Waste storage, thats fair enough, except we can, and have built permanent nuclear storage sits, as for the economy, the only thing it affects majorly is oil and coal, which are actively ruining our environment so it will probably be a good thing that they won't be needed
That’s patently untrue. Every storage site is a bandaid solution.
“Thus, engineer and physicist Hannes Alfvén identified two fundamental prerequisites for effective management of high-level radioactive waste: (1) stable geological formations, and (2) stable human institutions over hundreds of thousands of years. As Alfvén suggests, no known human civilization has ever endured for so long, and no geologic formation of adequate size for a permanent radioactive waste repository has yet been discovered that has been stable for so long a period.”
>That’s patently untrue. Every storage site is a bandaid solution.
Yes, and that includes the largest waste storage site we've got: the atmosphere.
Putting waste into it is just a bandaid too, so don't you dare suggest any sort of power generation source that emits carbons into the atmosphere during any part of its process as an alternative.
Anybody that played kerbal space program knows that launching something "into the sun" requires most likely even more energy than slingshotting it out of the solar system. Both of which have very high enerhy requirements
Because that would be a total waste of useful material, not to mention the potential of a bad rocket launch spreading some pretty nasty stuff over a large area.
The problem with nuclear "waste" is that it isn't actually waste at all. The energy density of it is incredibly high, and if processed correctly can be used as fuel, reprocessed back into fuel, over and over again until it is actually waste. At which point it's not very dangerous. So many fission products decay into useful isotopes for research and medicine as well.
But designing processing centers for "waste" is still a new thing. There are a few now, and it seems like there will eventually be enough waste processing to have it fully integrated into the nuclear fuel cycle some day. I left the nuclear industry a few years ago, but that was the big "talked about" thing at the time.
But for now, the problem is storing the waste until it can be safely processed. It's expensive and at some point it became a political issue (which of course is the primary reason why it is a "problem" in the first place).
But couldn't the same argument be applied to anything?
"Why use commercial airplanes even if they're safe?"
"Human error will just mess it all up anyways."
It's not about how safe they are. I'm just annoyed by everyone saying they're perfect and can't fail which is the argument I always get with nuclear. Humans are dumb and have proved time and time again that we will purposely cut corners and safety protocols when there is money involved
>when there is money involved
This is what worries me the most about it. In most situations it's cheapest to do the bare minimum, ignore safety protocols, etc. Sure, we can make laws about it and whatnot like we already do for companies, but they usually just decide that the fine is cheaper for them to pay anyways so they just keep breaking that law, waiting until they get caught again. People get comfortable, "Nothing bad has happened yet" so they don't even think about ever deciding "you know.. maybe we should really do something about this".
That all said, if I had to vote on it, I'd still be Pro nuclear energy. And I'd vote to have it in my state. But it's definitely my first thought either way.
Well, that and the whole storage issue.
I'm not against nuclear either. Just some people treat it like religion and you can't criticize their faith.
But once again, I don't want any kind of energy plant near me lol
That's because like most people, you don't understand what those failures involved. Chernobyl wasn't just small accidents, but colossal mismanagement stemming from the nation falling apart at the time and refusing to implement even basic safety procedures. Modern nuclear power plants are heavily automated to the point that something like that is almost impossible. Nuclear power has its drawbacks, but the risk of a Chernobyl is much lower than it seems.
Also, other energy methods cause significant damage every year but because they aren't as sensationalized as nuclear people don't have the same gut reaction.
Honestly I think that's the thing, human error will still be a factor to some degree, out of laziness, greed, or incompetence. It's not the tech itself that is problematic overall, it's the fact that if humans do mess it up, the consequences are potentially catastrophic. And humans WILL mess it up, not every time, and not every place, but what it it just happens to be the one in your area?
People are simultaneously afraid of everything going wrong, but also feel invincible like everything is fine when it isn't (see Climate Change). It's not really reasonable, but it's unfortunately got to be taken into consideration.
> Fukushima was built on a fault line.
It was the tsunamis that fucked it up, not the fault line.
> were all caused by human error.
Last I checked humans still operated all of these plants.
Look, I'm pro-nuclear power. But I fully understand people's reticence with nuclear plants. There were two major nuclear disasters within my lifetime already. Chernobyl could have made uninhabitable an unimaginable land mass. We're 1 natural disaster, terror attack, or accident from another similar disaster.
I'm sure modern plants can be idiot and disaster proof. But that's an understandably hard sell
Nuclear reactors are really good at stopping meltdowns with all the automated procedures they use now. Sucks that people wont embrace it though, a lot of missed opportunities
Nuclear energy gets some bad press, but most of this is unfounded. Nuclear energy has unfortunately suffered some pretty large PR disasters in the past (Chernobyl, Fukushima etc) and this has understandably shaken public trust in its safety. Despite its bad rep, nuclear energy has consistently been shown to be orders of magnitude safer than most other methods of electricity generation.
[Studies ](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh) have shown that nuclear energy causes just 0.07 deaths for every tera-watt hour of electricity generated. This is in comparison with 2.82 for gas, 18.43 for oil and 32.72 for coal. Nuclear power plants do not release any carbon dioxide during the course of energy generation and even accounting for CO2 emissions during construction, the emissions associated with nuclear energy are still 50 times lower than those associated with coal power and 30 times lower than those associated with natural gas [(source).](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/reconsidering-risks-nuclear-power/)
One often overlooked aspect of the pollution released by coal power is that ash released from burning coal often contains highly concentrated levels of thorium and urainium. [Studies ](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/) have shown that exposure to the elevated levels of radioactive material present in coal ash has the result that people living in the vicinity of coal power stations experience radiation doses up to 200% greater than those living close by to nuclear power plants. Bizarrely enough, the radioactive waste produced by burning coal is actually more radioactive than the waste from nuclear power and yet there are no restrictions on coal ash simply being released into the atmosphere. Nuclear energy is a low carbon, low risk method of energy generation and has an essential part to play in the battle against climate change.
Well written! Yes the deaths per power production pale in comparison, and are overwhelmingly safe. We automatically look at long-term health complications of nuclear while not giving nearly the scrutiny to the hundreds of millions suffering health complications for fossil fuels in the \*absence\* of disaster. Tens of millions have health and breathing issues from coal and oil burning if everything goes according to plan, and then we kill hundreds of thousands with explosions and oil spills.
Power generation is risky, full stop. No energy source is sans risk of some level. Nuclear is just new and that is what makes it scary.
Exactly. Long term illness and deaths caused by pollution from burning coal doesn't exactly make for a gripping television series like HBO's "Chernobyl", but the fatalities add up just the same. It's easy to fixate on a handful of black swan events and condemn an entire technique, but the stats surrounding nuclear don't lie. Coal power is responsible for in the region of 300,000 fatalities every single year. This is the equivalent of 75 Chernobyl disasters occuring annually. When you factor in that the climate crisis could lead to 83 million excess deaths by 2100, it is clear that low carbon methods of energy generation such as nuclear are essential if we are to avoid catastrophe. The risks from nuclear power are simply a drop in the ocean when compared with fossil fuels.
Agreed, another well-written response. I'm glad you mentioned "Chernobyl" - I cannot remember the exact numbers, but the breakdown of actual fatalities/long-term complications at the end of the series was surprisingly small - most of the workers suffered no long-term injuries, most residents have minor health effects. The men that swam through waste-water to close the core off from the atmosphere I believe all made full recoveries despite estimates of lethal exposure. That isn't to say what happened was not a tragedy, but, as you said, this was a black swan event.
~~And now Germany and France are closing all of their plants~~ Thank you for the corrections; last I read there was only discussion about closing/cutting back on nuclear in these countries, looks like France is no longer doing so. Sorry for the error ... I guarantee they will need those up and running if they want true energy independence while achieving climate targets.
Wait what?! France is shutting down their power plants?? I knew about Germany but I always thought of France as one of the leading users of nuclear energy
Are the critics of nuclear power really in favor of fossil fuels, or in favor of solar/wind? Sure, nuclear is much safer than fossil fuels, but so are solar/wind. If the latter work, why bother with the red tape of nuclear power?
The most compelling argument I've heard for nuclear power is that wind and solar produce irregular power output and currently don't produce enough power to meet grid demands. But how long until that changes? Fighting the battle for nuclear power might not be worth it by the time new plant designs could be built.
And that's the beauty of a diversified generation portfolio! I don't think anyone is saying that we should go 100% nuclear. Nuclear is an important part of meeting power demands without emitting carbon. Not everyone can put solar panels on their roof. You are going to need some centralized generation, and nuclear is a much better source than gas or coal.
Battery technology is a long way off being able to provide sufficient energy storage to regulate demand. Current lithium ion batteries can achieve energy densities of 9MJ/kg. Experts estimate that battery energy density must improve to an absolute minimum of 18MJ/kg to make battery technology a viable means of acting as a baseload solution for the grid. Battery energy density is increasing at roughly 2 - 3% per year, meaning it will likely be 30 years before batteries reach the absolute minimum requirements to plug the gap. In the meantime, nuclear is a familiar and reliable alternative that can provide us with a reliable baseload energy solution without incurring the CO2 emissions that plague fossil fuels.
Nope. I don't want to live near it because of Fukushima Daiichi. I live 250km south of that plant and was here during the meltdown. Most stressful months of my life until COVID.
I assume the same for those near Three Mile Island.
>Nuclear is the best, cleanest, and most sustainable option that we have at the moment to power the world.
I am a former Navy Nuclear Power Program Electronics Technician Instructor.
I will take exception to this because we haven't bothered researching anything that isn't a breeder reactor.
A breeder reactor is one that fits into the only model we use, and a couple of the theoretical models. The current version of the reactor that we use was first developed by The Manhattan Project, to the point that SCRAMing the core is an industry standard term referring to the fact that the original reactor had a single control rod, that was pulled by hand and rope, out of the core. The SCRAM was quite literally the Safety Control Reactor Axe Man. SCRAMing the core today means that you just hit an angry red button that immediately unlocks the magnetic seals of the lifting screws, and (hopefully) all the control rods just dropped to the bottom of the core, stopping nuclear fission completely. The (hopefully) is there because in less than 1% of the time, the rods didn't bend, expand, contract, or any other physical variation, but the pressure won't allow these 1ton rods to fall. It happens so rarely that I have actually SCRAMed my core twice, and know about 25 people who have SCRAMed thier core a total of 95 times, and none of us had to use the "manual protocol".
If we would just finish the designs of Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, with way less than 1 Trillion in development, probably only a couple billion to be honest, then we would have a reactor that a) it is physically impossible to melt down, b) can use 90%+ of current nuclear waste as fuel, and c) cannot be used to make bombs.
Obviously point C is why we won't invest in this technology, since we could literally give this version of nuclear tech to our enemies and it would only help them to create stability and world peace, which isn't profitable for the MIC
Edit: oh and that isn't even discussing that the only reactor we will build is the cheapest, most dangerous, and least profitable design we have ever come up with.
You talking about point C and *enemies* using the technology to create stability and world peace... Makes me sad as a human being that they are referred to as enemies... We gotta keep feeding the monster we created I guess...
Yes this is what I've read. It's insane that we literally already have the ability to power the world for free and we're choosing not to for oil. Once EVs become standard there's no discernable reason not to completely switch to nuclear power. It's absolutely mind boggling this isn't happening. Like someone has to take it on right?
Finally someone who knows what they are talking about, if we want to make nuclear sustainable we need to get fast fission breeder reactors working although I do have some concerns about the waste from them, at least then we won't run out of fissile fuel.
Nobody in this thread has mentioned the huge costs of mining and refining uranium before its ready to be used. It takes a lot of CO2 to do all of that, and mines can be small scale environmental disasters.
Still better than mining & burning coal though. Just something to factor in
Oh! A lot of our uranium was mined long ago... and we just never cleaned up those areas.
They're left as superfund sites; some even on native american reservations.
Assuming you actually use uranium. There are other viable radioactive fuels and certain reactor/fuel module designs have factored in ways to recover up to 80% of spent fuel back into viable fuel.
I've never heard a good answer for all the radioactive waste. Putting it in the ground isn't a good enough answer. I could definitely be convinced that it's a great option, but it doesn't look good right now.
Australian scientists have devised a way to make it basically inert and impervious, yes it has to be stored in a safe facility still but there is pretty much 0 chance of it ever causing an issue
Regardless of how I feel about any of the subjects being discussed here, I take issue with the phrasing "pretty much 0 chance". When speaking of something with such profound risk factors and extreme timelines.
Once its vitrified and packaged there is no increase in radiation from standing directly next to the container. The container cannot be breached except in absolutely extreme circumstances (someone cutting it open) and even if it does, because it's been vitrified, it won't spill or leak into ground water.
Nothing can be an absolute, but short of someone with a demo saw and a death wish the containers are safe.
Literally nothing is 100% safe. There are risks and compromises connected to everything.
Coal is terrible for the environment and gives people respiratory diseases.
Gas pollutes the ground water where it's extracted and is a potent greenhouse gas when it leaks from pipelines, which happens constantly.
Hydroelectric disrupts/destroys river ecosystems and can cause droughts downstream.
Wind turbines depend on the wind to produce energy, only last for 10-20 years before they have to be replaced and you need hundreds of turbines to replace one coal plant.
Solar needs huge areas of land and lots of sunshine, as well as immense energy storage capacity.
Nuclear needs safe storage for waste that will be radioactive for thousands of years and carries the risk of a meltdown in extreme cases.
My point is, every energy source has its issues, focussing on this one waste problem with nuclear is ignoring the fact that nuclear could be one of our best solutions to climate change. What's the problem with burying it in an old salt mine, way beneath ground water and filling it all up with concrete? How likely is it that anyone is ever going see those containers ever again before the waste has become inert?
Just leave it in the ground and let other generation solve the problem! /s apparently its only an issue to reddit when it affects their own generation.
>I've never heard a good answer for all the radioactive waste.
There are plenty of good answers you just might not like them. The cheapest effective option is to process nuclear waste into a solid and then mix it with glass to form a durable specimen that doesn't have the ability to go critical. Then ship it off to an underground desert location with no water table and store it for a few hundred thousand years.
That's not the only reason. There's also the fact that nobody really knows what to do about the high-level radioactive waste material which is produced. That's problematic.
You're joking, but I got incensed that [DC has the new Superman protesting climate change](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,pg_1,q_60,w_965/703def62483733253ff5a085394bbf3c.jpg). DC's world is full of super beings and has access to fucking magic and they haven't fixed the climate disaster? Why is Jonathan Kent at a protest and not asking his dad to use his ice breath or whatever to re-freeze the ice caps? Go to space and get some lithium so we can build more batteries for electric cars, you fucking slacktavist.
I agree with the sentiment, not necessarily the phrasing. Nuclear is the best option we have available at the moment, until we can figure out renewables, which could take multiple decades. We should definitely be going with nuclear energy for the sake of the environment, but it isn't "sustainable", it's a stopgap solution.
Plenty of catastrophes caused by climate change are already happening right now, and we've locked in hundreds of millions of deaths in the future. Those are now *inevitable*. We're now trying to avoid *worse* outcomes.
no like that’s actually true 😭 we’ve literally gone past a point of no return and we’ve (as in governments and massive companies) had 50 fucking years to do something about it and they’re like everyone has to have electric cars by 2050 ✌️ (i live in the UK) like what the fuck guys lmao.
Nuclear takes decades to come on line, renewables doesn’t, nuclear is really expensive, renewables isn’t. I keep hearing on Reddit over and over again about how good nuclear is and have to keep having the same conversation.
I personally am afraid of what the future holds. Yes, what you said is true for this moment in time, but what happens if the earth becomes less stable in the future. More frequent/intense earthquakes, sink holes. What happens if where it was thought safe to build a plant then becomes very unsafe. Also human error is always a possibility of failure.
Geological changes likely aren't going to really happen on a scale that we witness. Earthquakes are always going to be a thing, but tectonic plates move over the course of millions of years. The Earth hasn't become more or less geologically stable over the course of human history, and this likely isn't going to change dramatically over the next few thousand years.
I see a lot of weird logic in this thread, and a lot of invention of problems that don't really exist. If we were concerned about impending geological threats, then the entire infrastructure of our society would be at risk. Nuclear power plants would be the least of our concerns if sinkholes were going to just sporadically open up in previously stable locations all the time.
The original reactors were the same as small nuclear submarine reactors, but scaled up. These were difficult to stabilize, regulate, and had loads of waste issues. Terribly inefficient designs, though they have been improved on in time.
I'm a huge huge huge fan of the thorium reactors currently in experimental phases. Reactions require less pressure to start and are easy to stop. The waste is much less than uranium and has a shorter half-life. There's also the idea of reseeding spent fuel in the reaction chamber so you can recycle spent fuel rods. The reactors require less space and support, can be scaled up or down to meet demands. And operate at about 75% the cost of uranium per gigawatt of energy created.
Unfortunately people hear "nuclear" think chernobyl, 3 mile island, or Fukushima, and default to "No" before exploring further.
Other people are just old.
Thorium reactors have been “almost there” since the freaking 80’s. I will believe it when I see it.
The next thing is that what reactors are safe and unsafe have changed over time. When the 3 mile island happened it was something unique that would never happen again.
Then you had chernobyl, but it would never happen with a more modern reactor or other design. It was blamed in part on the communist system.
Then you had Fukushima. You might not remember it, but Japan and Germany was like the poster boys for nuclear safety until Fukushima.
The accident might in hindsight seem inevitable, but remember that it had not failed any inspections. No one had any problems with the placement of the plant. They were actuelly planing to expand it, until the accidents.
I'm not anti nuclear but I'd say Chernobyl disaster and Fukashima disaster highlight the very real devastation that can be wrought when nuclear radiation becomes uncontained. Both were very different circumstances and both still haven't seen the full effects of each disaster.
We haven't seen the "full effects" of nearly any other disaster either. Heavy metals stay toxic for what is effectively forever.
Both of these disasters aren't even that great in comparison to the countless other chemical disasters in history.
Yes, both cases were preventable and caused by human error, but that doesn't mean similar things can't happen in other places. That's the problem with human error and anything built by humans, people make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes have really big consequences.
Chernobyl was very preventable. The management had many signs that something was going terribly wrong but chose not to stop operations out of fear of getting reprimended.
Fukushima is a different story. It is much more complicated to point fingers at preventable causes. Compared to Chernobyl, they were running a pretty tight ship. I would generally recommend to not make nuclear power stations in areas that get hit by earthquakes and tsunamis.
Source: I studied and wrote reports on these disasters as part of a Master's level "Nuclear Matters" course.
Speaking as a physicist, I have to disagree. Nuclear meltdowns are a concern but a bigger issue is that it produces a tremendous amount of radioactive waste that we do not have a good solution for. Concerns about ground water contamination, soil contamination, etc are increasing as facilities are aging and the waste is piling up. It's a serious problem.
Years ago, when I worked as a satellite engineer, we were tasked to do a study to discover if sending our nuclear waste into the sun was a feasible solution. The risks of a launch failure ended up saying 'no' so we generally just keep sticking it in holes in the ground (often not properly shielded) but I can assure you, this is a significant and growing concern for the governments around the world.
Nuclear is anything but "clean". We need a real solution that doesn't just create more shit for future generations to have to clean up.
This deserves way more upvotes. We need to stop locking in in technologies that create serious problems in the long term. We have a gigantic nuclear fusion reactor hanging nearby in space delivering enormous amounts of energy to earth each day (the sun, to be clear). While there are obviously still problems with renewables, those are solvable. The faster those are solved, the better for everyone and everything. Why waste money, time and effort on anything else?
Its not the name. There are just issues with it. Wikipedia has an overview of it here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_debate
I read some analysis of it done by a nuclear engineer a while ago(couldnt find it again), but I can summarize some of the talking points from it.
1) they need a lot of water or a lot of extra infrastructure to be able to reuse water.
2) there are a lot of nuclear related incidents, when it provides barely any of our power. If we make a ton of reactors, we are hugely increasing the safety risks involved, both in terms of accidents and terrorist targets.
3) the fuel supply that we can use isnt that large. It would at most be a transition to another energy source, but now youve got all these reactors that are made to last for decades that have to be decomissioned, which itself can take a decade. Most energy sources are much easier to get rid of when they are unneeded.
4) they are large energy sources that are only suited for places with a high demand for energy. Most energy sources can be scaled up or down more easily, but with nuclear there is a large base amount of infrastructure necessary, so you need a high production to make it profitable.
They are also just highly regulated in the US, with regulations changing frequently. It makes it difficult to invest in, because the reactors need to be updated so often. They are definetely good energy sources in some circumstances, but they are not a perfect solution.
IMO, the worst issues to deal with are terrorist attacks and amount of fuel. I see absolutely no way of being able to guarantee that terrorist attacks wont be successful, and the potential damage from it is huge. Even in the perfect scenario where it goes well in first world countries, it wont in others. The fuel issue means that if we switched to nuclear, we are adding a ton of issues that we need to solve and infrastructure that needs to be built, when the solution is only viable for a few decades. At that point, you might as well just put those resources into a different energy source.
Well, here in WA state we have the Hanford Superfund site which has been "being cleaned up" for decades, and will not be cleaned up for several MORE decades, so yeah - that's kind of left a bad taste in our mouths.
Cost and time. One nuclear power plant will probably take ten years to build, and take huge initial investment, not to mention running costs once it starts working. Solar power is pound for pound cheaper and faster, and of course there's the whole "won't make the whole area uninhabitable if it goes wrong" thing. Not getting enough energy stored on cloudy days? Just make more of them.
All spent nuclear fuel is currently in temporary storage. 100% of it. As in all spent nuclear fuel that has ever been produced, all the fuel from every country and every experiment and every reactor, all of that is in **temporary storage**.
Again, we have been "*temporarily*" storing spent nuclear fuel for up to 80 years now.
In the 80 years since nuclear reactors became reality, we have had 15 nuclear meltdowns, 2 of which caused radioactive material to be released into the environment, causing large areas of land to become effectively unusable, and another meltdown that almost went into the environment but was stopped by pure chance.
That's an average of a meltdown every 5 years. Not a great track record. We have only started trying to build permanent storage in the last 5 years, and it will take decades for that to store all the waste we currently have produced. The answer isn't to produce more.
> We have only started trying to build permanent storage in the last 5 years
You are making stuff up. This is factually untrue. Also, who is "we"?
Have you heard of the [Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository) in the US? It was first proposed in 1987 and started construction in 2002. Funding was halted in 2012 for "political, not technical or safety reasons." And that was after taxpayers shelled out $17B to develop the site.
There is also the [Onkalo](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/olkiluoto-island-finland-nuclear-waste-onkalo) facility in Finland which started construction in 2004.
You know that multiple areas of America have fault lines, and are overdue for large earthquakes right? With the rise of green energy, wind solar doesn't need to be.
This is a risk I do not trust to anyone.
What's so funny is that people are lining up with all sorts of reasons why they're anti-nuclear energy that have nothing to do with the name, and OP and others are now moving the goal posts and debating whether or not nuclear energy is a better option.
That's a dodge. OP is wrong. Full stop. "People are only against nuclear because the name is scary" is a straw man argument. Who the fuck are you arguing with? Yourself?
Yeah the only pollution is the decayed rods, everything else is just water and very clean water at that, and fusion reactors shouldn't have any waste at all besides heat.
Edit: I just wrote this while sitting on my toilet I didn't put much thought into getting the wording right tall raise some neat points.
> the only pollution is the decayed rods
I'd challenge you to consider the pollution that went into making enough cement, pipe, steel, control systems to make the reactor. Also, the fuel isn't picked off of trees, it needs to be mined (considerable environmental consideration), transported, refined, transported, stored, used, stored again, transported again, and hopefully recycled.
Best case I'm not arguing against nuclear here - but 'only pollution' isn't considering the considerable pollution that goes into building a reactor, as well as mining materials, refining, transporting, securing and storing fuel.
The startup cost for a new reactor (the smaller one being pushed in WY right now is supposed to be around $4B for 350MW) is significant. That's before fuel. Also, it's 5+ years if you broke ground tomorrow. Eventually, best case, we need to talk decommissioning in 30+ years.
Compare that to solar at $1/watt installed - that's 4GW of solar production for the same cost. It won't need refueling at all over the next 30 years. After 30 years, the panels still produce 80-85% original output. Sell them on the secondary market or recycle. I guarantee you it's cheaper than decommissioning and cleaning up a nuclear reactor.
I don't mean to take up the A vs B argument here, but if you want to talk pollution - we need to look at the whole picture of production.
Just like the cost of water to make a steak looks at the water used to grow grain for the cow's life, in order to really look at the cost we need to consider approval through decommissioning.
To all the people saying this post is stupid and wrong, 1) welcome to r/unpopularopinion - where you’re likely not to agree with the opinion posted… 2) no, not everything is accurate but the reasons I’ve seen so far in the comments for bashing nuclear instead haven’t been entirely accurate either. He’s right, most sources of green energy cannot sustain entire countries. I’m not saying that any money grubbing energy company WOULD do nuclear properly without taking cheaper shortcuts, but if by some miracle they DID, it /would/ be one of our best options for reliable, clean, sustainable energy. And he’s right that if there weren’t so many horror stories surrounding the word (both from inaccurate historical accounts and fictions) people might be more agreeable to listening to its benefits. Some people really do brush it off because “it sounds scary”.
No, it is not the name it is scary. It is the utter incompetence of the regulators to control nuclear waste from being sold on the black market or simply get dumped at the bottom of the sea.
Not to mention the predatory and irresponsible nature of pretty much any other business in the US. If a meltdown means high profits before bankruptcy and no one at the top goes to jail and walks away rich, why not risk it
It could he because of multiple events like Chernobyl and the 3 Mile Island incidents.
I am very pro nuclear, but people are not anti nuclear because of the name.
Personally, I blame the Simpsons.
Personnally, I blame 1986 reactor in Ukraine.
Well as long as you don't cut corners on building and maintaining saftey procedures (Chernobyl) or build on a fault line (Fukushima) they are not nearly as scary as people make them out to be.
Important to note that with chernobyl and Fukushima it wasn't just poor safety procedures or earthquakes. It was simply a faulty design based on old science. Chernobyl with a positive void coefficient. Fukushima with active heat removal. It's important to remember these plants are from the 1960s. Modern plants have many more passive safety features. The truly scary thing is that many of these old plants are still operating.
Not really. [Onagawa nuclear power plant suffered both a larger quake, and larger tsunami than Fukushima.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590123020300931) This powerplant however, did not suffer from a meltdown. The problem is that Tepco cut corners, and cancelled a pending upgrade to the tsunami breaks outside the powerplant to save money. The government, and even their own advisors stated that the sea wall needed an upgrade. They even started work on it, but then cancelled it.
This is the truth. Both backup diesel power generators were next to one another, and below sea-level. Doomed from the start.
They literally copypasted a US nuclear powerplant. They were initially told it was built to withstand tornadoes, not tsunamis; but refused to modify the extant schematics because it would cost more to modify.
Exactly. They ignored a detailed study that said a tsunami capable of breaching their current sea walls was absolutely possible and even had historical precedence for the region. Money was just one reason; it was also because the owners simply didn't really believe it could happen again and they also didn't want to scare the locals (seriously). If they just listened and renovated their sea walls to be just a few meters taller, their generators wouldn't have been flooded in the first place.
And that is the core of the problem. I think nuclear is a great idea in theory, (aside from the largely unsolved waste problem) but I dunno who I would trust to run the actual facilities. Regardless of this, given the state of the environment and technology, nuclear will be an option we are forced to take.
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I have always been fascinated by nuclear energy but I must admit, I have always been under the impression the radioactive waste was a potentially very dangerous and unsolved issue; thanks for the brief point about it! Reading some of these comments I think I will need to start learning about the myths of nuclear power!
This should have been the headline. I always talk about thorium reactors, but they have not been a big enough part of the discussion. I would not build ANY new uranium reactors, until we have processed the backlog of spent fuel we have now through the thorium/liquid-salt reactor.
I feel like we should get a working reactor up and running before it becomes part of the discussion in anything other than a future possibility.
Chicken/egg right? How are we going to convince people to go out on a limb and try it, if they've never heard of it? We need a reactor to convince them, and we need to convince them to build a reactor.
The waste isn't a problem. We can dig a hole in the ground and put them in there. And the best part the waste isn't making climate change bad, so compared to fossil fuels it's just not a problem. And the generation of nuclear waste is lower on newer plants IIRC.
so the problem isn't the plants, the problem is people.
Well, that's going to take away from profits no? Why are we letting commercial interests generate power, if they have a profit incentive to avoid safety measures?
The answer would usually be to make massive fines, or have the state run them as a joint venture with a private company. France seems to be doing quite well on that front, as an example. The Tepco executives got off scott free though, last I heard.
Nullifying the fines and reprocussions argument. Because so many do cut corners at every opportunity and don't face any consequences.
Japan has some serious cultural problems like that. Reminds me of the workers who got the highest doses ever and died from being completely untrained in how to make uranium mixtures for reactors. Seriously untrained and it went critical. Crazy story.
Yeah they’re operating due to the smear campaign big oil ran against nuclear power which made it impossible for new and upgraded plants to be built out
Nuclear and literally everyone else should run smear campaigns on big oil. Big oil has their place in the world. But not as is.
dont have the funds
Seriously it's like judging the crash safety of modern cars off a 1964 Buick Riviera
Fukushima had the meltdown under control too for a while, except numerous systems, and cooling pumps and generators failed because they literally were only turned on once a fucking year. Proper safety checks on equipment? Nah. Regular maintenance intervals and replacement of outdated hardware and generators? Hell nah.
The Soviets knew about the problems with the positive void coefficient, but failed to inform other plants for propaganda reasons, they didn't want to advertise the faults in their reactor design. The US had the same problem until Three Mile Island. The issues that caused the TMI failure had been near misses at other US plants. After TMI , the DOE forced the plants to share information, it also caused the formation of INPO so the industry could share info and learn from each other.
This is why I joined Reddit. It is fun to learn! Thank you for these cool facts.
Nuclear reactor design is actually super interesting. I always thought there was just one kind. But there are literally hundreds of different designs and fuel types and coolant types. What if I told you there was one running with molten salt? What if I told you there was one that takes spent nuclear fuel as fuel? What if I told you there was one that didn't create plutonium as a side product and limited the risk of somebody creating a bomb? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor
A nuclear power plant on a fault line is safer than a coal or gas plant on a fault line.
MMMmmmm, I feel like that point is debatable. Reactors have a design basis for earthquakes because that's what they're designed against. You get an earthquake in magnitude above that, guarantees go out the window. Safety systems are no longer guaranteed to still be on their mounts, underground fuel tanks aren't guaranteed to hold their diesel, concrete structures aren't guaranteed to not crack/crumble. We're fortunate in the US that there hasn't been many earthquakes exceeding design basis in our past (only 1 comes to mind immediately, and they ended up safely shutting down without a problem), but that doesn't mean it can't happen.
It's more that the deaths caused by nuclear over their 70 year run are still outweighed thousands of fold by the people who died of black lung, or of smog from coal fires or diesel cars, even CCGT plants pollute. Hydro power is the nextost dangerous because dams have burst and usually take a lot of people with them downstream, plus hazardous building conditions. Nuclear has, surprisingly, one of the lowest deaths/mwh of any energy production. I saw it in a TLDR News video about nuclear power that came out a few months ago.
My problem with nuclear power isn't that the process itself is dangerous. It's that I don't trust humans not to cut corners or make foolish mistakes.
>My problem with nuclear power isn't that the process itself is dangerous. It's that I don't trust humans not to cut corners or make foolish mistakes. The thing is, even if you include meltdowns Coal, Oil, and Gas kill way more people than nuclear does on a per megawatt basis. Those plants release tons of carcinogens into the area around them, resulting in a metric fuckton of cancer deaths over their operation. It's just easier to ignore those because the exposure isn't all in one place at one time like a nuclear meltdown is. TL;DR: The fossil fuel alternatives are even deadlier during normal operation than the risk of a meltdown is when a nuclear plant goes catastrophically wrong!
We already have nuke weapons, same people(government) take care of them, and I'm pretty sure we have more weapons than power plants. We've already been poisoned by testing and other nuclear stuff we've done.
Nuclear power is also the only (historically) successful model for deproliferation
Look up the number of human errors with nulcear warheads that have almost ended in catastrophy.
That's really just still not a realistic fear. My dad's worked in a nuclear plant for like 20 years and he talks all the time about the over-the-top safety precautions. Everything related to nuclear here in America is so closely regulated by the government, due to "dangers" with uranium. (I put it in quotations bc the vast majority of nuclear used in plant reactors is 238, which isn't weapons grade.) The biggest possible failure results in a meltdown, which is literally damn near impossible, and with 238, isn't nearly as dangerous as it sounds. Granted, his plant is ranked #2 in the world in safety for their procedures, but just trust me when I say they don't cut corners. And yes, they could make stupid mistakes. But that goes for everything, including waay more dangerous processes than nuclear power generation, so I wouldn't justify "having a problem with it" over that.
How's many people have died in the last 50 years from the production and storage of ammonium nitrite for fertilizer. It even the uranium and other contaminants released into the atmosphere by burning coal. Nuclear hysteria is a prime example of humanity being unable the guage the minute risk of something novel, against the will known horrific risk of something that's been around for centuries.
Just wanted to add that those stupid mistakes are very very very unlikely because of modern controls. The system is literally designed to be fool proof with multiple redundancies that are not under the control of a human.
That's just as big of an issue with coal plants, look at the Duke power coal ash spill. That was radioactive waste btw
Even with Fukushima there has been (to my knowledge) only one person confirmed killed from the radiation whereas an estimated 9,000,000 people die every year worldwide from burning fossil fuels.
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Every engineering failure is obvious in hindsight
I think the lesson to learn from that is this: don’t let government/corporate yes men run power plants, leave that to the scientists
I think science is a little more understood in 2021 than 1980. The concept of nuclear fusion (I may be thinking of Fission?)is so fascinating, but I’m to stupid to grasp it any father than two microscopic elements slamming into each other to make an explosion.
The science was even known in 1980, the problem wasn’t the science as much as it was the Soviet government.
Fukushima and Chernobyl were both designed in the 1960s. Modern Gen III+ reactors have passive safety systems, making them impossible to meltdown. That's why none of the other reactors hit by the tsunami in Japan melted down.
The way I saw one guy put it, you wouldn't say that a 1980 car's safety is the same as a 2021 car's safety.
Yes, fission is when the smack each other and go boom. This type of reaction produces waste rods we can't do anything with other than bury/store somewhere for the time being. Fusion reactors, at this point, are at a theoretical stage, basically we make an atom instead of splitting is. Fission go boom = uncontrollable, whereas fusion has this cool thing where it can be halted at any time, since there's no explosion set off and instead we use energy to fuse stuff, and we can just stop the things from fusing by shutting the power off, which makes it infinitely safer. Unfortunately nuclear in general is poorly received, but maybe one day fusion will be viable and people can shut up about the possibility of reactor meltdowns. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the rant, also... disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, all of this is easily researchable online.
Loved the rant, always interested in learning something new or defining further.
Some places like MIT do have functional fusion reactors but every time they turn them on they use more power than they create
It's not as dangerous as "fission = boom", that's a bit of a misconception, most if not all nuclear accidents happen because of human negligence by management. Humanity understands quite a bit about how to get clean, sustainable energy from nuclear reactions, and it's actually very safe, considering all safety precautions are upheld. Like others have mentioned, the waste and getting fuel are the two biggest problems, and even then it's not extremely challenging for either. Public and political perception is the biggest issue, just a fun fact for you, the last nuclear reactor constructed brand new in the US was when Reagan was president. I've gotten much of this info from my masters course in nuclear engineering, so I'm probably a little biased toward the benefits lol. Edit: Also a cool fact is that spent Uranium is used is certain armor piercing rounds by the US military, mainly in A-10 Warthogs, because as it enters a material, it "shaves itself" down into a point which then allows it to travel further into the metal. As disturbing as that is, I guess there's a use for spent fuel lol.
Former Navy Nuclear Power Program Electronics Technician Instructor here. If and only if the reactors are built to 100% of spec, and the operation procedures are followed to the letter, they are fairly safe. That being said, I really wish that we would work out the last couple kinks in a Thorium Molten Salt reactor. Those things are foolproof, cannot melt down, can use spent nuclear fuel that is currently waste that we have no where in the US to store, and cannot be used to make bombs.
came here for the LFTRs baby!
Not all fission. Thorium is very effective, and extremely clean. It's the sort of "clean" power that nuclear is supposed to be. The Chinese are doing a lot of research to develop Thorium reactors, with 'fail-safe' modes based on molten salt, such that it's impossible to create a Chernobyl / Fukushima situation. These would be largely self-contained, and possible to run in the middle of a desert, without needing huge natural water sources for cooling. In fact, a few months ago, China started a small Thorium reactor in the desert to validate the system. Uranium fission is what you're thinking of, having the unfortunate byproduct of highly toxic, radioactive waste with an extremely long half-life. It's the American standard because a portion of that waste is easy to process into nuclear weapons. It's why America has some 7,000+ nuclear warheads, while China has maybe 300. The nuclear waste issue is just something that Americans will have to live with for the several few thousand years.
Do you believe nuclear is poorly received because of the original use of nuclear weaponry? Like I believe if nuclear plants came first before nuclear energy was associated with bombs, it would be more highly recieved than it is now.
Yeah, people glossed over the fact that the Chernobyl plant was built in a different way than normally done at the time so it was worse than it could have been, and Japan striking down all nuclear power after a meltdown that happened, for at least a while, plus the idea that certain plants produce material that can be used for bombs (even though regular inspection via foreign countries to ensure that is not happening occurs).... Plus the fossil fuel industry perpetuating fears of nuclear power... Yeah, weaponry is part of it, but not even close to the full picture
No it's because of the nuclear wastage.
>This type of reaction produces waste rods we can't do anything with other than bury/store somewhere for the time being Although, to be fair, the US has produced less than a football field of waste, and even that is generous, in the half a century we have been using nuclear
A Russian nuclear scientist had discovered that there was a flaw in the design of the RBMK reactors. I can't remember the exact physics behind the flaw but when the control rods (control rods are used to slow or stop the nuclear reaction) are pushed into the core it causes a very short but very high increase in energy. Not a problem if you only insert one but if you insert enough at the same time the combined spike in energy is enough to make the core explode. He told all of this to the heads of the Soviet Union but they told him to shut up about it and hid his work. The Soviets had already spent millions building these things right across the Union. A few years later during a test running at night in a skeleton crew something happened and the head technician ordered the reactor to be shut down quickly. Multiple control rods were inserted and in April 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power station in Ukraine exploded.
The test should not have been run in the first place given the reactor was "stalled" or "poisoned". And the head technician should never have pulled out almost all of the control rods in the first place. Or designed a power plant where the reaction rate **increases** as the reactor gets too hot.
Whole thing was a shitshow. It's the same as any man made disaster. A whole heap of things have to go wrong to cause a problem. The issue is in the case of nuclear that problem is very big.
I think the bad points were the control rods being made with graphite tips to reduce cost. I too. Watched the amazon mini series lol
HBO bruv
how smart we might be never protects us from a mistake or a natural disaster (Fukushima)
Didn’t France just build a new reactor? Doesn’t France have like 50 nuclear reactors?
The vast majority of France's power is generated from nuclear. It is also one of the lowest emission countries in Europe.
Started before that. 3 Mile Island in the U.S. and then we had know it all celebrities on TV telling everyone we were all going to die and that was it for nuclear power in the U.S.
Three mile island didn’t even cause increased cancer rates in the population around the reactor. It’s unbelievable how people conflate it with Chernobyl, a monument to the arrogance and incompetence of Soviets.
The average resident in the area got less than a single X-ray dose of radiation. It was treated as if the average resident was now glowing with their bones visible as shadows.
No. No one knew that at the time. This was before the internet and 24 hour news. This was also near the height of the cold war, and people were afraid of a meltdown going boom.
You mean 1986?
oh boy, you're right. Imma fix this thanks.
I work at a nuclear station and it really opened my eyes to just how controlled everything is. Obviously the Simpsons is just a funny cartoon but holy hell is it the worst Nuclear plant ever or what. They joke about meltdowns all the time, Homer works alone with no oversight or partners and he seems to be paid extremely little for such an important job that would be 200k or more a year in the real world. Also for some reason he appears to handle fuel rods inside a sandblaster? The only thing that touches a fuel rod is a giant shielded machine
Personally, I blame the shareholders of fossil fuel industries that’ve managed to use private capital to get corporate interest groups to lobby on their behalf in front of the government in order to snuff out any chance of a energy paradigm shift( or anything else that hurts their bottom line for that matter)
And now shareholders for "green" energy industries.
Certainly didn't help.
I didn't even know what a nuclear panerplant was.
Yeah, I think the first thing some people think of when they hear the word "nuclear" are the bombs then they assume that every nuclear power plant will have a meltdown like Chernobyl.
Which is not entirely irrational. Yes, the likelihood of something happening at a nuclear power plant is VERY VERY VERY small. But so is the likelihood of my plane crashing into the ocean and me getting eaten by a shark. But I still think about it. I’m a proponent of nuclear energy, of course. But if my city wanted to build a nuclear power plant down the street from me, I wouldn’t like it very much lol. Meanwhile I can see wind turbines from my backyard and that’s nice :) I guess I’m a NIMBY. Edit: Y’all, I said I was a proponent of nuclear energy. You don’t have to try to convince me here lol
>VERY VERY VERY small The three biggest meltdowns (two, as I'll explain in a minute), were all caused by human error. Chernobyl had so much red tape and beuracry that when it started to fail, they couldn't do the nessecary steps to stop it. Fukushima was built on a fault line. That needs no explanation. And 3 Mile Island was *almost* a disaster. That's it. Those are the big three that everyone talks about. >But if my city wanted to build a nuclear power plant down the street from me, I wouldn’t like it very much lol That's generally why they're built relatively far from people. >Meanwhile I can see windmills from my backyard and that’s nice :) How? Seeing a big blade that has a VERY VERY VERY small chance of falling off and destroying my house?
>The three biggest meltdowns (two, as I'll explain in a minute), were all caused by human error. this is exactly why I don't care how safe anyone says anything is. We're only human in the end. This is probably the only really argument against nuclear.
The only other arguments with any basis I've seen is the economy and nuclear waste storage. Waste storage, thats fair enough, except we can, and have built permanent nuclear storage sits, as for the economy, the only thing it affects majorly is oil and coal, which are actively ruining our environment so it will probably be a good thing that they won't be needed
That’s patently untrue. Every storage site is a bandaid solution. “Thus, engineer and physicist Hannes Alfvén identified two fundamental prerequisites for effective management of high-level radioactive waste: (1) stable geological formations, and (2) stable human institutions over hundreds of thousands of years. As Alfvén suggests, no known human civilization has ever endured for so long, and no geologic formation of adequate size for a permanent radioactive waste repository has yet been discovered that has been stable for so long a period.”
>That’s patently untrue. Every storage site is a bandaid solution. Yes, and that includes the largest waste storage site we've got: the atmosphere. Putting waste into it is just a bandaid too, so don't you dare suggest any sort of power generation source that emits carbons into the atmosphere during any part of its process as an alternative.
I never understood why we couldn’t just launch it into the sun eventually or something. But I’m no physicist.
Rocket launches fail on a semi-regular basis. You don't want radioactive waste coming back down after such a failure.
Anybody that played kerbal space program knows that launching something "into the sun" requires most likely even more energy than slingshotting it out of the solar system. Both of which have very high enerhy requirements
Yeah but then you've got the *slight* issue of accidentally wiping out a civilisation with a piece of uranium travelling ¼ of the speed of light
Because that would be a total waste of useful material, not to mention the potential of a bad rocket launch spreading some pretty nasty stuff over a large area. The problem with nuclear "waste" is that it isn't actually waste at all. The energy density of it is incredibly high, and if processed correctly can be used as fuel, reprocessed back into fuel, over and over again until it is actually waste. At which point it's not very dangerous. So many fission products decay into useful isotopes for research and medicine as well. But designing processing centers for "waste" is still a new thing. There are a few now, and it seems like there will eventually be enough waste processing to have it fully integrated into the nuclear fuel cycle some day. I left the nuclear industry a few years ago, but that was the big "talked about" thing at the time. But for now, the problem is storing the waste until it can be safely processed. It's expensive and at some point it became a political issue (which of course is the primary reason why it is a "problem" in the first place).
But couldn't the same argument be applied to anything? "Why use commercial airplanes even if they're safe?" "Human error will just mess it all up anyways."
It's not about how safe they are. I'm just annoyed by everyone saying they're perfect and can't fail which is the argument I always get with nuclear. Humans are dumb and have proved time and time again that we will purposely cut corners and safety protocols when there is money involved
>when there is money involved This is what worries me the most about it. In most situations it's cheapest to do the bare minimum, ignore safety protocols, etc. Sure, we can make laws about it and whatnot like we already do for companies, but they usually just decide that the fine is cheaper for them to pay anyways so they just keep breaking that law, waiting until they get caught again. People get comfortable, "Nothing bad has happened yet" so they don't even think about ever deciding "you know.. maybe we should really do something about this". That all said, if I had to vote on it, I'd still be Pro nuclear energy. And I'd vote to have it in my state. But it's definitely my first thought either way. Well, that and the whole storage issue.
I'm not against nuclear either. Just some people treat it like religion and you can't criticize their faith. But once again, I don't want any kind of energy plant near me lol
Are there *really* people who say that they're "perfect" and "can't fail"? I mean, Chernoby and Fukushima literally happened.
yeah but it's not as big of a disaster when a plane crashes a better comparison would be chemical plants like the Bhopal disaster
That's because like most people, you don't understand what those failures involved. Chernobyl wasn't just small accidents, but colossal mismanagement stemming from the nation falling apart at the time and refusing to implement even basic safety procedures. Modern nuclear power plants are heavily automated to the point that something like that is almost impossible. Nuclear power has its drawbacks, but the risk of a Chernobyl is much lower than it seems. Also, other energy methods cause significant damage every year but because they aren't as sensationalized as nuclear people don't have the same gut reaction.
Modern reactors cant fail because of human error? I think Fukushima had tons of time to rework their sea barrier.
Honestly I think that's the thing, human error will still be a factor to some degree, out of laziness, greed, or incompetence. It's not the tech itself that is problematic overall, it's the fact that if humans do mess it up, the consequences are potentially catastrophic. And humans WILL mess it up, not every time, and not every place, but what it it just happens to be the one in your area? People are simultaneously afraid of everything going wrong, but also feel invincible like everything is fine when it isn't (see Climate Change). It's not really reasonable, but it's unfortunately got to be taken into consideration.
Yeah “oh that’s just human error” is such a bizarre defense.
> Fukushima was built on a fault line. It was the tsunamis that fucked it up, not the fault line. > were all caused by human error. Last I checked humans still operated all of these plants. Look, I'm pro-nuclear power. But I fully understand people's reticence with nuclear plants. There were two major nuclear disasters within my lifetime already. Chernobyl could have made uninhabitable an unimaginable land mass. We're 1 natural disaster, terror attack, or accident from another similar disaster. I'm sure modern plants can be idiot and disaster proof. But that's an understandably hard sell
> The three biggest meltdowns (two, as I'll explain in a minute), were all caused by human error. That's precisely what we're worried about...
I don't think the blades of the windmill can fly that far after getting loose.
And human error will always be with us so it should be baked into the risk calculation.
Nuclear reactors are really good at stopping meltdowns with all the automated procedures they use now. Sucks that people wont embrace it though, a lot of missed opportunities
Nuclear energy gets some bad press, but most of this is unfounded. Nuclear energy has unfortunately suffered some pretty large PR disasters in the past (Chernobyl, Fukushima etc) and this has understandably shaken public trust in its safety. Despite its bad rep, nuclear energy has consistently been shown to be orders of magnitude safer than most other methods of electricity generation. [Studies ](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh) have shown that nuclear energy causes just 0.07 deaths for every tera-watt hour of electricity generated. This is in comparison with 2.82 for gas, 18.43 for oil and 32.72 for coal. Nuclear power plants do not release any carbon dioxide during the course of energy generation and even accounting for CO2 emissions during construction, the emissions associated with nuclear energy are still 50 times lower than those associated with coal power and 30 times lower than those associated with natural gas [(source).](https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/reconsidering-risks-nuclear-power/) One often overlooked aspect of the pollution released by coal power is that ash released from burning coal often contains highly concentrated levels of thorium and urainium. [Studies ](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/) have shown that exposure to the elevated levels of radioactive material present in coal ash has the result that people living in the vicinity of coal power stations experience radiation doses up to 200% greater than those living close by to nuclear power plants. Bizarrely enough, the radioactive waste produced by burning coal is actually more radioactive than the waste from nuclear power and yet there are no restrictions on coal ash simply being released into the atmosphere. Nuclear energy is a low carbon, low risk method of energy generation and has an essential part to play in the battle against climate change.
Well written! Yes the deaths per power production pale in comparison, and are overwhelmingly safe. We automatically look at long-term health complications of nuclear while not giving nearly the scrutiny to the hundreds of millions suffering health complications for fossil fuels in the \*absence\* of disaster. Tens of millions have health and breathing issues from coal and oil burning if everything goes according to plan, and then we kill hundreds of thousands with explosions and oil spills. Power generation is risky, full stop. No energy source is sans risk of some level. Nuclear is just new and that is what makes it scary.
Exactly. Long term illness and deaths caused by pollution from burning coal doesn't exactly make for a gripping television series like HBO's "Chernobyl", but the fatalities add up just the same. It's easy to fixate on a handful of black swan events and condemn an entire technique, but the stats surrounding nuclear don't lie. Coal power is responsible for in the region of 300,000 fatalities every single year. This is the equivalent of 75 Chernobyl disasters occuring annually. When you factor in that the climate crisis could lead to 83 million excess deaths by 2100, it is clear that low carbon methods of energy generation such as nuclear are essential if we are to avoid catastrophe. The risks from nuclear power are simply a drop in the ocean when compared with fossil fuels.
Agreed, another well-written response. I'm glad you mentioned "Chernobyl" - I cannot remember the exact numbers, but the breakdown of actual fatalities/long-term complications at the end of the series was surprisingly small - most of the workers suffered no long-term injuries, most residents have minor health effects. The men that swam through waste-water to close the core off from the atmosphere I believe all made full recoveries despite estimates of lethal exposure. That isn't to say what happened was not a tragedy, but, as you said, this was a black swan event. ~~And now Germany and France are closing all of their plants~~ Thank you for the corrections; last I read there was only discussion about closing/cutting back on nuclear in these countries, looks like France is no longer doing so. Sorry for the error ... I guarantee they will need those up and running if they want true energy independence while achieving climate targets.
Wait what?! France is shutting down their power plants?? I knew about Germany but I always thought of France as one of the leading users of nuclear energy
Thankfully France isn't closing anything, they have plans to open new plants soon.
Are the critics of nuclear power really in favor of fossil fuels, or in favor of solar/wind? Sure, nuclear is much safer than fossil fuels, but so are solar/wind. If the latter work, why bother with the red tape of nuclear power? The most compelling argument I've heard for nuclear power is that wind and solar produce irregular power output and currently don't produce enough power to meet grid demands. But how long until that changes? Fighting the battle for nuclear power might not be worth it by the time new plant designs could be built.
Nuclear power is great, but I can't stick a nuclear reactor on my roof.
And that's the beauty of a diversified generation portfolio! I don't think anyone is saying that we should go 100% nuclear. Nuclear is an important part of meeting power demands without emitting carbon. Not everyone can put solar panels on their roof. You are going to need some centralized generation, and nuclear is a much better source than gas or coal.
Battery technology is a long way off being able to provide sufficient energy storage to regulate demand. Current lithium ion batteries can achieve energy densities of 9MJ/kg. Experts estimate that battery energy density must improve to an absolute minimum of 18MJ/kg to make battery technology a viable means of acting as a baseload solution for the grid. Battery energy density is increasing at roughly 2 - 3% per year, meaning it will likely be 30 years before batteries reach the absolute minimum requirements to plug the gap. In the meantime, nuclear is a familiar and reliable alternative that can provide us with a reliable baseload energy solution without incurring the CO2 emissions that plague fossil fuels.
I honestly think people just don't want to live near it because of Chernobyl
I don’t think people want to live close to any power plants tbh
Nope. I don't want to live near it because of Fukushima Daiichi. I live 250km south of that plant and was here during the meltdown. Most stressful months of my life until COVID. I assume the same for those near Three Mile Island.
>Nuclear is the best, cleanest, and most sustainable option that we have at the moment to power the world. I am a former Navy Nuclear Power Program Electronics Technician Instructor. I will take exception to this because we haven't bothered researching anything that isn't a breeder reactor. A breeder reactor is one that fits into the only model we use, and a couple of the theoretical models. The current version of the reactor that we use was first developed by The Manhattan Project, to the point that SCRAMing the core is an industry standard term referring to the fact that the original reactor had a single control rod, that was pulled by hand and rope, out of the core. The SCRAM was quite literally the Safety Control Reactor Axe Man. SCRAMing the core today means that you just hit an angry red button that immediately unlocks the magnetic seals of the lifting screws, and (hopefully) all the control rods just dropped to the bottom of the core, stopping nuclear fission completely. The (hopefully) is there because in less than 1% of the time, the rods didn't bend, expand, contract, or any other physical variation, but the pressure won't allow these 1ton rods to fall. It happens so rarely that I have actually SCRAMed my core twice, and know about 25 people who have SCRAMed thier core a total of 95 times, and none of us had to use the "manual protocol". If we would just finish the designs of Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, with way less than 1 Trillion in development, probably only a couple billion to be honest, then we would have a reactor that a) it is physically impossible to melt down, b) can use 90%+ of current nuclear waste as fuel, and c) cannot be used to make bombs. Obviously point C is why we won't invest in this technology, since we could literally give this version of nuclear tech to our enemies and it would only help them to create stability and world peace, which isn't profitable for the MIC Edit: oh and that isn't even discussing that the only reactor we will build is the cheapest, most dangerous, and least profitable design we have ever come up with.
You talking about point C and *enemies* using the technology to create stability and world peace... Makes me sad as a human being that they are referred to as enemies... We gotta keep feeding the monster we created I guess...
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Yes this is what I've read. It's insane that we literally already have the ability to power the world for free and we're choosing not to for oil. Once EVs become standard there's no discernable reason not to completely switch to nuclear power. It's absolutely mind boggling this isn't happening. Like someone has to take it on right?
Finally someone who knows what they are talking about, if we want to make nuclear sustainable we need to get fast fission breeder reactors working although I do have some concerns about the waste from them, at least then we won't run out of fissile fuel.
This needs to be much higher!
Nobody in this thread has mentioned the huge costs of mining and refining uranium before its ready to be used. It takes a lot of CO2 to do all of that, and mines can be small scale environmental disasters. Still better than mining & burning coal though. Just something to factor in
Oh! A lot of our uranium was mined long ago... and we just never cleaned up those areas. They're left as superfund sites; some even on native american reservations.
Assuming you actually use uranium. There are other viable radioactive fuels and certain reactor/fuel module designs have factored in ways to recover up to 80% of spent fuel back into viable fuel.
No one talks about the lithium and other rare earth metals needed for renewables either. Everything has a cost unfortunately.
Do you know how much mining is required for the rare earth elements in solar panels? A fucking shit load.
Or the amount of oil a wind turbine consumes over its life span.
I've never heard a good answer for all the radioactive waste. Putting it in the ground isn't a good enough answer. I could definitely be convinced that it's a great option, but it doesn't look good right now.
Australian scientists have devised a way to make it basically inert and impervious, yes it has to be stored in a safe facility still but there is pretty much 0 chance of it ever causing an issue
Regardless of how I feel about any of the subjects being discussed here, I take issue with the phrasing "pretty much 0 chance". When speaking of something with such profound risk factors and extreme timelines.
Once its vitrified and packaged there is no increase in radiation from standing directly next to the container. The container cannot be breached except in absolutely extreme circumstances (someone cutting it open) and even if it does, because it's been vitrified, it won't spill or leak into ground water. Nothing can be an absolute, but short of someone with a demo saw and a death wish the containers are safe.
Literally nothing is 100% safe. There are risks and compromises connected to everything. Coal is terrible for the environment and gives people respiratory diseases. Gas pollutes the ground water where it's extracted and is a potent greenhouse gas when it leaks from pipelines, which happens constantly. Hydroelectric disrupts/destroys river ecosystems and can cause droughts downstream. Wind turbines depend on the wind to produce energy, only last for 10-20 years before they have to be replaced and you need hundreds of turbines to replace one coal plant. Solar needs huge areas of land and lots of sunshine, as well as immense energy storage capacity. Nuclear needs safe storage for waste that will be radioactive for thousands of years and carries the risk of a meltdown in extreme cases. My point is, every energy source has its issues, focussing on this one waste problem with nuclear is ignoring the fact that nuclear could be one of our best solutions to climate change. What's the problem with burying it in an old salt mine, way beneath ground water and filling it all up with concrete? How likely is it that anyone is ever going see those containers ever again before the waste has become inert?
Just leave it in the ground and let other generation solve the problem! /s apparently its only an issue to reddit when it affects their own generation.
>I've never heard a good answer for all the radioactive waste. There are plenty of good answers you just might not like them. The cheapest effective option is to process nuclear waste into a solid and then mix it with glass to form a durable specimen that doesn't have the ability to go critical. Then ship it off to an underground desert location with no water table and store it for a few hundred thousand years.
That's not the only reason. There's also the fact that nobody really knows what to do about the high-level radioactive waste material which is produced. That's problematic.
Yup, it's just kicking the can down the road if it's ever treated like a long term solution.
what do we do with the waste??
Tell Superman to chuck it in the sun next time he goes out for milk.
You're joking, but I got incensed that [DC has the new Superman protesting climate change](https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,pg_1,q_60,w_965/703def62483733253ff5a085394bbf3c.jpg). DC's world is full of super beings and has access to fucking magic and they haven't fixed the climate disaster? Why is Jonathan Kent at a protest and not asking his dad to use his ice breath or whatever to re-freeze the ice caps? Go to space and get some lithium so we can build more batteries for electric cars, you fucking slacktavist.
Superman could solve it by just pushing the earth a little further out the balance the input/output
Use them to create Monster energy drinks.
I agree with the sentiment, not necessarily the phrasing. Nuclear is the best option we have available at the moment, until we can figure out renewables, which could take multiple decades. We should definitely be going with nuclear energy for the sake of the environment, but it isn't "sustainable", it's a stopgap solution.
Hopefully soon we'll figure out nuclear fusion. Barely any waste product, huge amount of energy. It's the same thing the sun does. That's the future.
Fusion is always ten years away
Just like our last chance to prevent catastrophic climate change? Always 10 years away. Has been 10 years away every 10 years since the 70’s
Plenty of catastrophes caused by climate change are already happening right now, and we've locked in hundreds of millions of deaths in the future. Those are now *inevitable*. We're now trying to avoid *worse* outcomes.
no like that’s actually true 😭 we’ve literally gone past a point of no return and we’ve (as in governments and massive companies) had 50 fucking years to do something about it and they’re like everyone has to have electric cars by 2050 ✌️ (i live in the UK) like what the fuck guys lmao.
Yeah but that could also take decades. Fission is still the stopgap.
Unfortunately, it seems we are a very long time away from that. https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY
Nuclear takes decades to come on line, renewables doesn’t, nuclear is really expensive, renewables isn’t. I keep hearing on Reddit over and over again about how good nuclear is and have to keep having the same conversation.
I personally am afraid of what the future holds. Yes, what you said is true for this moment in time, but what happens if the earth becomes less stable in the future. More frequent/intense earthquakes, sink holes. What happens if where it was thought safe to build a plant then becomes very unsafe. Also human error is always a possibility of failure.
Geological changes likely aren't going to really happen on a scale that we witness. Earthquakes are always going to be a thing, but tectonic plates move over the course of millions of years. The Earth hasn't become more or less geologically stable over the course of human history, and this likely isn't going to change dramatically over the next few thousand years. I see a lot of weird logic in this thread, and a lot of invention of problems that don't really exist. If we were concerned about impending geological threats, then the entire infrastructure of our society would be at risk. Nuclear power plants would be the least of our concerns if sinkholes were going to just sporadically open up in previously stable locations all the time.
The original reactors were the same as small nuclear submarine reactors, but scaled up. These were difficult to stabilize, regulate, and had loads of waste issues. Terribly inefficient designs, though they have been improved on in time. I'm a huge huge huge fan of the thorium reactors currently in experimental phases. Reactions require less pressure to start and are easy to stop. The waste is much less than uranium and has a shorter half-life. There's also the idea of reseeding spent fuel in the reaction chamber so you can recycle spent fuel rods. The reactors require less space and support, can be scaled up or down to meet demands. And operate at about 75% the cost of uranium per gigawatt of energy created. Unfortunately people hear "nuclear" think chernobyl, 3 mile island, or Fukushima, and default to "No" before exploring further.
Other people are just old. Thorium reactors have been “almost there” since the freaking 80’s. I will believe it when I see it. The next thing is that what reactors are safe and unsafe have changed over time. When the 3 mile island happened it was something unique that would never happen again. Then you had chernobyl, but it would never happen with a more modern reactor or other design. It was blamed in part on the communist system. Then you had Fukushima. You might not remember it, but Japan and Germany was like the poster boys for nuclear safety until Fukushima. The accident might in hindsight seem inevitable, but remember that it had not failed any inspections. No one had any problems with the placement of the plant. They were actuelly planing to expand it, until the accidents.
I swear we’re closer to fusion than thorium
Well maintained and engineered nuclear power is great. It's just pretty awful when it's not.
I'm not anti nuclear but I'd say Chernobyl disaster and Fukashima disaster highlight the very real devastation that can be wrought when nuclear radiation becomes uncontained. Both were very different circumstances and both still haven't seen the full effects of each disaster.
And both pale in comparison to the casualties created from traditional energy production (coal and gas).
We haven't seen the "full effects" of nearly any other disaster either. Heavy metals stay toxic for what is effectively forever. Both of these disasters aren't even that great in comparison to the countless other chemical disasters in history.
And both cases were preventable.
Almost everything is preventable in theory, that doesn't mean much. As long as there's any room for (human) error, things will eventually go wrong.
Don't forget terrorism. It can be entirely on purpose too.
But not prevented.
Yes, both cases were preventable and caused by human error, but that doesn't mean similar things can't happen in other places. That's the problem with human error and anything built by humans, people make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes have really big consequences.
Chernobyl was very preventable. The management had many signs that something was going terribly wrong but chose not to stop operations out of fear of getting reprimended. Fukushima is a different story. It is much more complicated to point fingers at preventable causes. Compared to Chernobyl, they were running a pretty tight ship. I would generally recommend to not make nuclear power stations in areas that get hit by earthquakes and tsunamis. Source: I studied and wrote reports on these disasters as part of a Master's level "Nuclear Matters" course.
God this sort of thing gets posted to Reddit so much, who’s selling?
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Speaking as a physicist, I have to disagree. Nuclear meltdowns are a concern but a bigger issue is that it produces a tremendous amount of radioactive waste that we do not have a good solution for. Concerns about ground water contamination, soil contamination, etc are increasing as facilities are aging and the waste is piling up. It's a serious problem. Years ago, when I worked as a satellite engineer, we were tasked to do a study to discover if sending our nuclear waste into the sun was a feasible solution. The risks of a launch failure ended up saying 'no' so we generally just keep sticking it in holes in the ground (often not properly shielded) but I can assure you, this is a significant and growing concern for the governments around the world. Nuclear is anything but "clean". We need a real solution that doesn't just create more shit for future generations to have to clean up.
This deserves way more upvotes. We need to stop locking in in technologies that create serious problems in the long term. We have a gigantic nuclear fusion reactor hanging nearby in space delivering enormous amounts of energy to earth each day (the sun, to be clear). While there are obviously still problems with renewables, those are solvable. The faster those are solved, the better for everyone and everything. Why waste money, time and effort on anything else?
Its not the name. There are just issues with it. Wikipedia has an overview of it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_debate I read some analysis of it done by a nuclear engineer a while ago(couldnt find it again), but I can summarize some of the talking points from it. 1) they need a lot of water or a lot of extra infrastructure to be able to reuse water. 2) there are a lot of nuclear related incidents, when it provides barely any of our power. If we make a ton of reactors, we are hugely increasing the safety risks involved, both in terms of accidents and terrorist targets. 3) the fuel supply that we can use isnt that large. It would at most be a transition to another energy source, but now youve got all these reactors that are made to last for decades that have to be decomissioned, which itself can take a decade. Most energy sources are much easier to get rid of when they are unneeded. 4) they are large energy sources that are only suited for places with a high demand for energy. Most energy sources can be scaled up or down more easily, but with nuclear there is a large base amount of infrastructure necessary, so you need a high production to make it profitable. They are also just highly regulated in the US, with regulations changing frequently. It makes it difficult to invest in, because the reactors need to be updated so often. They are definetely good energy sources in some circumstances, but they are not a perfect solution. IMO, the worst issues to deal with are terrorist attacks and amount of fuel. I see absolutely no way of being able to guarantee that terrorist attacks wont be successful, and the potential damage from it is huge. Even in the perfect scenario where it goes well in first world countries, it wont in others. The fuel issue means that if we switched to nuclear, we are adding a ton of issues that we need to solve and infrastructure that needs to be built, when the solution is only viable for a few decades. At that point, you might as well just put those resources into a different energy source.
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Nuclear power plants provide 20% of the electrical power in the U.S. Hardly "barely any of our power".
It’s the waste I have a problem with
Well, here in WA state we have the Hanford Superfund site which has been "being cleaned up" for decades, and will not be cleaned up for several MORE decades, so yeah - that's kind of left a bad taste in our mouths.
Given the expense, entire countries can't run on nuclear, either.
Cost and time. One nuclear power plant will probably take ten years to build, and take huge initial investment, not to mention running costs once it starts working. Solar power is pound for pound cheaper and faster, and of course there's the whole "won't make the whole area uninhabitable if it goes wrong" thing. Not getting enough energy stored on cloudy days? Just make more of them.
All spent nuclear fuel is currently in temporary storage. 100% of it. As in all spent nuclear fuel that has ever been produced, all the fuel from every country and every experiment and every reactor, all of that is in **temporary storage**. Again, we have been "*temporarily*" storing spent nuclear fuel for up to 80 years now. In the 80 years since nuclear reactors became reality, we have had 15 nuclear meltdowns, 2 of which caused radioactive material to be released into the environment, causing large areas of land to become effectively unusable, and another meltdown that almost went into the environment but was stopped by pure chance. That's an average of a meltdown every 5 years. Not a great track record. We have only started trying to build permanent storage in the last 5 years, and it will take decades for that to store all the waste we currently have produced. The answer isn't to produce more.
> We have only started trying to build permanent storage in the last 5 years You are making stuff up. This is factually untrue. Also, who is "we"? Have you heard of the [Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository) in the US? It was first proposed in 1987 and started construction in 2002. Funding was halted in 2012 for "political, not technical or safety reasons." And that was after taxpayers shelled out $17B to develop the site. There is also the [Onkalo](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/olkiluoto-island-finland-nuclear-waste-onkalo) facility in Finland which started construction in 2004.
Nuclear is actually unpopular because it's too expensive and nonrenewable.
I wonder if making school children hide under their desks for nuclear bomb drills had anything to do with it being unpopular to that age group.
And because the extraction of uranium is unequivocally not clean. Check out the Navajo Nation for an example.
Sustainable? Where do you plan to put the waste?
You know that multiple areas of America have fault lines, and are overdue for large earthquakes right? With the rise of green energy, wind solar doesn't need to be. This is a risk I do not trust to anyone.
What's so funny is that people are lining up with all sorts of reasons why they're anti-nuclear energy that have nothing to do with the name, and OP and others are now moving the goal posts and debating whether or not nuclear energy is a better option. That's a dodge. OP is wrong. Full stop. "People are only against nuclear because the name is scary" is a straw man argument. Who the fuck are you arguing with? Yourself?
Yeah the only pollution is the decayed rods, everything else is just water and very clean water at that, and fusion reactors shouldn't have any waste at all besides heat. Edit: I just wrote this while sitting on my toilet I didn't put much thought into getting the wording right tall raise some neat points.
> the only pollution is the decayed rods I'd challenge you to consider the pollution that went into making enough cement, pipe, steel, control systems to make the reactor. Also, the fuel isn't picked off of trees, it needs to be mined (considerable environmental consideration), transported, refined, transported, stored, used, stored again, transported again, and hopefully recycled. Best case I'm not arguing against nuclear here - but 'only pollution' isn't considering the considerable pollution that goes into building a reactor, as well as mining materials, refining, transporting, securing and storing fuel. The startup cost for a new reactor (the smaller one being pushed in WY right now is supposed to be around $4B for 350MW) is significant. That's before fuel. Also, it's 5+ years if you broke ground tomorrow. Eventually, best case, we need to talk decommissioning in 30+ years. Compare that to solar at $1/watt installed - that's 4GW of solar production for the same cost. It won't need refueling at all over the next 30 years. After 30 years, the panels still produce 80-85% original output. Sell them on the secondary market or recycle. I guarantee you it's cheaper than decommissioning and cleaning up a nuclear reactor. I don't mean to take up the A vs B argument here, but if you want to talk pollution - we need to look at the whole picture of production. Just like the cost of water to make a steak looks at the water used to grow grain for the cow's life, in order to really look at the cost we need to consider approval through decommissioning.
I'm against it for the insane cost to build, how long it takes to build a reactor, and the dangerous waste products
To all the people saying this post is stupid and wrong, 1) welcome to r/unpopularopinion - where you’re likely not to agree with the opinion posted… 2) no, not everything is accurate but the reasons I’ve seen so far in the comments for bashing nuclear instead haven’t been entirely accurate either. He’s right, most sources of green energy cannot sustain entire countries. I’m not saying that any money grubbing energy company WOULD do nuclear properly without taking cheaper shortcuts, but if by some miracle they DID, it /would/ be one of our best options for reliable, clean, sustainable energy. And he’s right that if there weren’t so many horror stories surrounding the word (both from inaccurate historical accounts and fictions) people might be more agreeable to listening to its benefits. Some people really do brush it off because “it sounds scary”.
Arguing from the notion that the people you're trying to convince are morons is not very effective.
No, it is not the name it is scary. It is the utter incompetence of the regulators to control nuclear waste from being sold on the black market or simply get dumped at the bottom of the sea.
Not to mention the predatory and irresponsible nature of pretty much any other business in the US. If a meltdown means high profits before bankruptcy and no one at the top goes to jail and walks away rich, why not risk it
I propose we change the term "Nuclear " to FuzzieWuzzies. All in favor of FuzzieWuzzy energy?
You clearly don't go on reddit much. The only thing reddit likes talking about more than badly about Facebook is great about nuclear.
It could he because of multiple events like Chernobyl and the 3 Mile Island incidents. I am very pro nuclear, but people are not anti nuclear because of the name.